Another Dry Run for U.S. Election Day? “Massive cyber-attack grinds Liberia’s internet to a halt”

The entire internet infrastructure of the African nation of Liberia has been brought to a grinding halt after it was targeted by hackers using the same weapon that caused the largest cyber-attack in history just two weeks ago.

The attack was a distributed denial of service, or DDoS, in which a network of infected computers – a botnet – is directed to bombard its target with traffic, overloading its servers.

The weapon used in the October attack, the Mirai botnet, was particularly effective because it harnessed infected, internet-connected devices such as DVR players and digital cameras.